Current information on broad-scale climatic conditions is essential for assessing potential distribution of forest pests. At present, sophisticated spatial interpolation approaches such as the Parameter-elevation Regressions on Independent Slopes Model (PRISM) are used to create high-resolution climatic data sets. Unfortunately, these data sets are based on 30-year...

In prior national mapping efforts, the country has been divided into numerous ecologically similar mapping zones, and individual models have been constructed for each zone. Additionally, a hierarchical approach has been taken within zones to first mask out areas of nonforest, then target models of tree attributes within forested areas only. This results in many models...

Wilderness attracts tourists and generates visitor spending in proximate communities as people enjoy Wilderness for outdoor recreation. Wilderness also attracts amenity migrants and out-of-region investments into surrounding regional economies. To investigate the amount and types of employment and income generated by Wilderness visitation, we conducted an economic...

Natural resource professionals are often tasked with weighing the benefits and costs of changes in ecosystem services associated with land management alternatives and decisions. In many cases, federal regulations even require land managers and planners to account for these values explicitly. Outdoor recreation is a key ecosystem service provided by national forests and...

Insects and diseases are common disturbance agents in forested ecosystems. Severe outbreaks can cause significant changes in tree species composition, age structure, and fuel conditions over broad areas. To investigate the role of biological disturbances in shaping forest landscapes over time, we constructed a new "biological disturbance agent" (BDA) module...

Elevated atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2e) increases soil respiration rates in forest, grassland, agricultural and wetland systems as a result of increased growth, root biomass and enhanced biological activity of soil microorganisms. Less is known about how forest floor fluxes respond to the combined effects of elevated CO...

Pressure­volume curves were constructed and shoot water potentials measured for +20-year-old black spruce (Picea mariana (Mill.) BSP) trees from four full-sib families growing on a moist site and a dry site at the Petawawa Research Forest, Ontario, to determine whether differences in diurnal water relations traits were related to productivity. To...

The persistence of landscape-scale disturbance legacies in forested ecosystems depends in part on the nature and strength of feedback among disturbances, their effects, and subsequent recovery processes such as tree regeneration and canopy closure. We investigated factors affecting forest recovery rates over a 25-year time period in a large (6 million ha) landscape...